Save Your Needles

This is seriously clever:

The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader's family, a Guardian investigation has found.

...

The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country.

DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present.

...

A nurse known as Bakhto, whose full name is Mukhtar Bibi, managed to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines. According to several sources, the doctor, who waited outside, told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device. It is not clear what the device was, or whether she left it behind. It is also not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, although one source suggested the operation did not succeed.

Mukhtar Bibi, who was unaware of the real purpose of the vaccination campaign, would not comment on the programme.

Low Bidders

Q: Aren't you a little young to be international arms dealers?
A: Yes. Yes we are.

Just read this:

...[Efraim] Diveroli and [David] Packouz soon got the break they were looking for. On July 28th, 2006, the Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Illinois, posted a 44-page document titled "A Solicitation for Nonstandard Ammunition." It looked like any other government form on fbo.gov, with blank spaces for names and telephone numbers and hundreds of squares to be filled in. But the document actually represented a semi-covert operation by the Bush administration to prop up the Afghan National Army. Rather than face a public debate over the war in Afghanistan, which was going very badly indeed, the Pentagon issued what is known as a "pseudo case" — a solicitation that permitted it to allocate defense funds without the approval of Congress. The pseudo case wasn't secret, precisely, but the only place it was publicized was on fbo.gov. No press release was issued, and there was no public debate. The money was only available for two years, so it had to be spent quickly. And unlike most federal contracts, there was no dollar limit posted; companies vying for the deal could bid whatever they wanted.

Based on the numbers, it looked like it was going to be a lot of money. The Army wanted to buy a dizzying array of weapons — ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles and SVD Dragunov sniper rifles, GP 30 grenades, 82 mm Russian mortars, S-KO aviation rockets. The quantities were enormous — enough ammo to literally create an army — and the entire contract would go to a single bidder. "One firm fixed-price award, on an all-or-none basis, will be made as a result of this solicitation," the tender offer said.

The solicitation was only up for a matter of minutes before Diveroli spotted it, reading the terms with increasing excitement. He immediately called Packouz, who was driving along the interstate.

"I've found the perfect contract for us," Diveroli said. "It's enormous — far, far bigger than anything we've done before. But it's right up our alley."

The pair met at Diveroli's apartment to smoke a joint and discuss strategy. Supplying the contract would mean buying up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ammunition for the kind of Eastern Bloc weapons that the Afghans used. Because such weapons were traded in the gray market — a world populated by illegal arms dealers, gun runners and warlords — the Pentagon couldn't go out and buy the ammo itself without causing a public relations disaster. Whoever won the contract to arm the Afghans would essentially be serving as an official front operation, laundering shady arms for the Pentagon.

...

The Pentagon can be a slow-moving bureaucracy, a place where paperwork goes to die. But because the Afghanistan solicitation was a "pseudo case," it had been designed to move swiftly. On the evening of January 26th, 2007, Packouz was parking his beat-up old Mazda Protege when Diveroli called.

"I have good news and bad news," Diveroli said.

"What's the bad news?" Packouz asked.

"Our first order is only for $600,000."

"So we won the contract?" Packouz asked in disbelief.

"Fuck yeah!" said Diveroli.

...and this is where I point out that Packouz is 25 years old and Diveroli is 21.

Seriously.
H/t Felix Salmon

See Spot Jump

(Via Danger Room)

Incredibly, the accompanying text is stranger than the picture:

[British Special Air Service] pooches are trained for High Altitude High Opening (HAHO) jumps, in which parachutes are deployed at a high altitude and long horizontal distance away from a target location in order to allow jumpers to glide in without detection. The SAS dogs are trained to jump tethered to their handlers from heights as high as 25,000 feet and up to 20 miles away — or a 30 minute glide — from a target location.  At that height, the lack of oxygen puts them at risk for hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation,  so the dogs are fitted with special masks to give them breathable air. The Brits reportedly borrowed the tactic from America’s super-secret Delta Force, which first trained dogs to make HAHO jumps.

Asymmetrical Warfare

I've been reading Free Range International for awhile now, a blog by Tim Lynch - a private security contractor in Afghanistan - and one of the recurring themes of his blog is that the Taliban really, really suck at fighting:

There was an attack on the HQ of one of the security firms in Kabul last week involving two suicide bombers.  They popped up well inside the new Kabul “Ring of Steel” checkpoint system which seems to be designed to harass internationals and opened up on the exterior guards as they walked down the street housing Hart Security.  The Hart guards returned fire for a second or two and locked themselves inside the compound as did the exterior guards outside the gates of every other compound on that street which means about 25 men jumped inside their compounds when the two attackers unmasked.  The attackers reached the gate and, according to eye witnesses, one said he’ll take the gate down and the other moved back about 20 feet. When bad guy one blew down the gate, bad guy two also perished because 20 feet of stand off is inadequate for powerful suicide vests.

FRI points out, this is despite years and years of experience planning such operations. Granted the participants are always noobs - but you wouldn't be out of line expecting the people who orchestrate these attacks to learn from failure. And there is plenty of failure - trouble is, when a bomb goes off in a city - very few people know what the original plan was. It is very easy to assume that a detonation is a success - and reporters love an easy story.

Which is precisely why I like to read FRI and articles like the one in The Atlantic he's posting about - The Case for Calling Them Nitwits. Not just because it heaps abuse on those who are attempting to kill our soldiers and pretty much anyone they dislike - but because it presents a deeper analysis of what truly happened when a bomb goes off.

It is depressing to learn that an almost random assortment of tactics, executed by impressionable and gullible novices can simultaneously threaten two nations - and be thought to be a cohesive, organized enemy.

Which is not to dismiss them - they are not losing because they do not give up. The fact that any success in Afghanistan hinges on getting them to do something other than kill people is even less encouraging.

But still - the perspective is useful.

Drone Wars

The BBC had an interesting blob of data about the US drone strikes in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Here's a sample:

Looks Like We're Staying in Afghanistan...

U.S. Discovers Stunning Mineral Reserves in Afghanistan 

The New York Times says U.S. officials believe the vast veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, lithium, and niobium could "fundamentally alter" the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war.  U.S. officials told the newspaper Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the "most important mining centers in the world." 

Crazyhorse One-Eight

(Via CJR)

On the morning of July12th, 2007, two Apache helicopters using 30mm cannon fire killed about a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad.

Two children were also wounded.

Among the dead were two employees of Reuters, a cameraman and his driver.

We have it on film.

This is the gun camera film seconds before the Apache fires on a van that is collecting the wounded body of the Reuters driver. The gunner is afraid this van will get away and is urgently demanding permission to fire.

Come on, let us shoot!

Permission is granted, and the van is destroyed.

Once the wounded children are discovered and evacuated, the gunner's reply is Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.

Well, obviously.

--------------------------------------

Afghanistan is bringing us similar good news (H/t Glenn).

You just have to throw up your hands.

What. The. F@ck?

Safe, Expensive & Stupid

FRI's babatim has a new post about Jalalabad's current status as a "white," or dangerous, city.

babatim doesn't have a lot of faith in the idea of locking down a city - and even less in the reasons for why the city was locked down. Here's his awesome run down of why this was a bad idea:

So today Jalalabad was on lock down to the international community. Declared a “white city” by [the United Nations Department of Safety & Security] due to two factors; a report of “five female BBIED (Body Borne Improvised Explosive Device) bombers who are looking to strike important targets” and reporting by various international security agencies of “spectacular attacks,” while President Karzai is in London attending an international conference. There has never been a female suicide bomber in Afghanistan to the best of my knowledge and there is no historical correlation to President Karzai attending international meetings and “spectacular” attacks. The (smart) military intelligence analysts dismissed the female suicide bomber story out of hand – they had seen similar reporting weeks ago and found nothing to substantiate them.

The smaller reconstruction projects which The Bot and I consult for ignored the White City and carried on with our daily routine. International reconstruction specialists cost the taxpayers of America over $1000 per day, so locking them down for no reason is a very expensive mistake. The military knew the principal threat spooking the UN security people was bogus, but they don’t talk to each other much. Both the UN and the military are operating inside huge bureaucratic closed loops – neither organization has the capacity to get into the local environment to conduct real time assessments. Only the small fries in the reconstruction business: JICA, CADG, CHF, etc… pay attention to White Information because they have to in order to operate. The large bureaucracies react to bogus intel which flows around the closed, insulated loops – their analysts deal with emails not people. They have the money which allows them to spend day after day on “lockdown” due to “threat warnings” generated by people who lack local access and situational awareness.

The military is even worse – everyday several times a day they fly people between the Jalalabad PRT and the army base at the Jalalabad airport. That is a trip of no more than 400 meters. You could walk it in 15 minutes – you could run shuttle buses between the camps all day every day for maybe 50 dollars a day. Do you know how much it costs for one flight hour in a military helicopter? Does the military honestly believe that the 200 meters of route one separating their bases is so dangerous that it warrants flying helicopters between them? Of course not – but flying in helicopters is easier than running four vehicle MRAP convoys and every time a soldier drives outside the front gate of a base he has to be in a four vehicle convoy with at least 16 riflemen. Who the hell can afford to spend money this way? Helicopter crashes in Afghanistan routinely kill two to three times more military members than the Taliban has ever been able to kill even when they mass their best fighters against isolated positions held by only a handful of Americans. Why is flying in a helicopter safer than a 15 minute walk or 5 minute bus ride? In large bureaucracies cost efficiency and common sense are not part of the operational paradigm.

Watching the watchers

You gotta be kidding me. Insurgents have been able to tap into video feeds of US surveillance drones.

Here's Danger Room:

Using cheap, downloadable programs like SkyGrabber, militants were apparently able to watch and record the video feed — and potentially be tipped off when U.S. and coalition forces are stalking them. The $26 software was originally designed to let users download movies and songs off of the internet. Turns out, the program lets you nab Predator drone feeds just as easily as pirated copies of The Hangover.

And here’s the real scandal: Military officials have known about this potential vulnerability since the Bosnia campaign. That was over 10 years ago.

How is this possible? Witness the foresight of the US Army:

The Army drones are the most vulnerable to interception, because they broadcast their feeds unencrypted and in every direction. Retrofitting the hand-held Raven UAVs will take “at least two years,” Col. Gregory Gonzalez tells Hoffman. Locking up the Army’s other drones may take even longer.

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

Scratch four

In counter-insurgencies, you read a lot about how the bad guys attack and then fade away before the cavalry arrives.The IED-centric nature of the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan bears this out. You have troops stressing over getting killed by bombs placed by people they have never seen.

Well, Free Range International's babatim has a post that establishes that bad guys in A-stan are perfectly capable of doing something incredibly stupid.

While enjoying a morning cup of coffee and checking email up on the Baba Deck with a group of friends who are in from the States we saw what was clearly the signature of a tanker attack just up the road. That has never happened this close to Jalalabad before so we conducted a brief staff meeting which consisted of saying “let’s go” and headed up the road to see what was what.

What was what was a Taleban ambush of a fuel tanker convoy Jalalabad had just kicked off - and the bad guys had picked the wrong place and the wrong time.

Worth a read.

Pedros

Once again, something I learned from FRI: I learned what a Pedro is.

They're pretty fricking amazing.

Not included in the total

ProPublica reminds us that every time we are told the number of American casualties in a place like Iraq (As of today, somewhere around 4,300 deaths and over 30,000 wounded) we should append another number - that of the American contractors who bleed there as well.

Contractor casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan so far amount to over 1,500 dead and another 35,000 wounded.

And while a small portion of those contractors are trigger pullers - you're mostly talking about a people who signed up to mundane work - like drive trucks.

ProPublica tells the story of one of them - a man named Reggie Lane.

Reggie Lane was once a hulking man of 260 pounds. Friends called him "Big Dad." Now, he weighed less than 200 pounds and his brain was severely damaged. He groaned angry, wordless cries.

Mr. Lane's story is a window into a larger issue of what happens when civilians supporting the war effort in theater, become casualties of that war. They're supposed to be provided insured under a regulation called the Defense Base Act.

....back home, the American government consigned [civilian contractors] to a federal insurance system marked by substandard care and excessive delays, according to a joint investigation by ProPublica, the Los Angeles Times and ABC News. Military veterans and former cops were forced to fight for basic medical care, psychological counseling, even prosthetic legs. Janitors and cooks from impoverished countries hired to work at U.S. military bases were never told of their rights to medical treatment. Widows and children have been left in poverty.

And who is the primary provider of this second rate care? Three letters.

A. I. G.

Peter W. Galbraith throws down

(Via CJR)

The (former) second highest ranking U.N. official in Afghanistan has gone postal over the reasons why he was canned.

In a WaPo OpEd.

Short version: The U.N. is choosing to ignore Pres. Karzai's corruption in this election. I could not.

Read the whole screed.

FRI to Afghan ISAF: Mind your manners

Recently the French closed a major highway in Afghanistan for six hours because they had an accident. Everyone had to wait until they had recovered the vehicle.

Free Range International offers the following to coalition forces in Afghanistan:

...the US Army continues to roll through downtown Jalalabad instead of using the brand new high speed truck by pass which is faster and safer for them.  Their focus in exclusively internal.  They plan all operations, movements, and interactions with the Afghans (when they manage to get off a FOB) based on what is easiest and safest for them with no consideration of the Afghan people.  This is an “effects based” opinion based on what I see daily.  The only military unit I have been able to observe in the planning stages were the Marines in Helmand where I listened in on planning  to build military roads designed to avoid adversely impacting the local people in the Helmand Green Zone.  The Marines focus was exclusively external on what was convenient for the Afghans not what was easiest for them.  This may explain why they have taken such a large chunk of the Helmand River Valley and dominated it with little to no post assault fighting while the British army is unable to walk 100 meters off their combat outposts in the same river valley without getting blown up or in a fire fight.

Employees are good at…

…the things the boss checks on.

I was sort of blowing past the recent Kabul guard scandal (where tax-funded security personnel engaged in deviant behavior, rather than doing their jobs) because it wasn't like they massacred civilians, or gang raped a coworker. The bar has been set pretty high, after all.

But I was struck by the part where reports of this behavior had been filtering in for years and still, STILL these companies get their contracts renewed.

There’s a certain insanity to taking the lowest bidder for site security contracts and not enforcing basic performance criteria.

I’d been reading back through some of the Free Range International posts and noticed he’s talking about the same issue – back in May.

[The officers who hire contractors]… have a very hard job. They can earn no glory, they do not receive praise, the best thing that can happen to them on a tour in Afghanistan is to return home with their rank and reputation. To avoid the temptation or appearance of fraud or favoritism they write requests for proposals which make little to no sense and award contracts based exclusively on the lowest bid submitted. What is the price for disconnecting contracting from performance? You get security guards hired to protect bases who actually murder American soldiers. I know of three such incidents and there are more. I had a friend show up at the Taj who was asked to stand up a guard force as soon as he could to replace an outfit named “Golden State.” There is no company by that name on the Afghan list of 37 authorized security companies. It was a rogue outfit run by some Afghans who spent time in America and their bid for these guard jobs was less than half what the reputable firms bid. They won, they sucked, they were fired and shot at their Army employers on the way out the door but, being typical Afghans, they did not hit anyone. I asked my buddy if the Army had finally figured out their guard forces needed international supervision and of course the answer was no. Too expensive don’t you see. Our Army will spend 2 million dollars each on ground penetrating radars to mount on the front of the hundreds of multimillion dollar MRAPs despite the fact that they HAVE NEVER DETECTED A MINE IN AFGHANISTAN. But spending money on proper guard forces to watch over our troops on a base – oh no, that is just too expensive.

His whole post The Dutch Boy Dilemma is worth reading, sort of a rant against risk-averse deployment of the military in general. But it points at a trend we've seen in other US deployments.

What is our mission in Afghanistan? I have been here four years and I don’t have a clue. If it is to prevent the return of the Taliban and al Qaeda, that mission was accomplished years ago. They will never be back in any kind of force regardless of when and how we leave. Is it to stand up a central government to allow the people of Afghanistan to join the rest of the functioning core of nation states? That is a noble mission and one I often used to explain why we are here years ago when I first started talking to local leaders in Shrua’s. But our actions on the ground do not remotely correspond to that mission (if that is why we are here.) How can you mentor Afghans if all your diplomats stay completely isolated from them inside a posh embassy throwing endless rounds of parties for each other? Look at the Afghan government. It is judged by all international observers to be in the top three nation sates for official corruption and you can see where all the billions we have spent has gone.

This guy and Rachel Maddow are on opposite poles of the political world - yet they have the same view of our involvement in Afghanistan.

It's clear that Afghanistan was the necessary war. We know why we went. But it's been over seven years now. It is unclear what we plan to do as we stay.

Makes you wonder.

Word from the front

One of the nice side effects of the internet is rapid access to the commentary of troops in the field. The military is grappling with issues of operational security - but there are plenty of contractors and hangers on who are free to blog.

I've been following Free Range International for awhile now, and it's a trip. You learn things.

Like - how not to meet with Afghan leaders and deliver food and medicine:

The [US] force rolls into the town on MRAP’s with full battle kit, a bunch of “H[umanitarian] A[id]” aid bags full of tea packets, soccer balls and school supplies, two terps [interpreters], some medical staff, and no plan.  For those of you who have never been to Afghanistan let me clue you into a fact – the last thing in the world these people need is tea.  They have plenty and they hate Lipton tea bags because they suck – that is like rolling into a Mexican border town and giving the locals packets of cocaine and boxes of 5.56 ammo – they have enough of that shit … although the thought counts for something I guess.

The [meeting with the town leader] doesn’t go well.  The locals bum rush the supplies, the medics have no female terp and are also getting overwhelmed to the point of panic by people who no doubt have a ton of problems such as infected sores, intestinal parasites, malaria etc.. which the Americans could easily treat if they had the time, patience and a clue.  They see a young man snapping pictures with a cell phone – something Afghans do all the time – and interpret this as possibly hostile activity so they scan him with the BATS (Biometric Automated Tool Set)  and erase his cell phone.  Of what possible relevance these cell phone pics could be remains a mystery to me.    Young Afghans taking cell phone pictures is what one expects to see and is therefore not a “rule of opposites” scenario.

...

Let me provide the yellow.  In order to do [Key Leader Engagements] you need to engage the “key leaders” in a manner consistent with your objectives.  If your objective is to provide aid and make new friends how should the company commander present himself?  I vote for he drives in with his terp in an unarmored SUV; sits down with the local elders and asks permission to come in with his company and also for their help distributing some supplies. You ask him to provide male and female interpreters as well as supervisors to assist with the distribution of aid and you agree to the rate for these folks.  You both agree exactly how the MEDCAP will go and pay for supervisors – both male and female to do that too.  Leave the security outside the village and walk in without all the body armor – side arms or slung rifles are  no big deal they are a fact of life in this country.  The visit is supposed to be about trust and you can only show trust with actions …. not words.  If the elders do not hold up their end of the bargain you leave.  It is that simple – Pashtunwali cuts both ways and if they won’t play ball they should get the stick … or just be ignored.

You also learn about defending fixed locations:

[We] are looking at a ridge line some 600 meters away which is the attack point for...gunmen who fire on this post regularly.  There are four [Afghan National Army] soldiers and four [Afghan National Police] policemen manning this position and they have a Hummer mounted M60 machinegun, and RPK machinegun and their rifles for defense.  Apparently the bad guys tend to attack  in the evening when the ANP re-supply truck arrives with chow and they have wounded at least two ANP policemen this month.

What is frustrating to guys like [us] is the fact that we could easily sort out this threat with a good machinegun squad and a mortar – manned by proper infantry.  An American squad with a sharp squad leader would be perfect for a job like this.  The reason why American infantry is so effective is that their machineguns come with tripods and T&E’s which are traversing and elevation mechanisms.  Machineguns are deadly in the defense because you can dial them in using a map, range finders, a little math and test firing.  There are five different firing spots on the ridge across from this position and each of them should be dialed in on range cards so that the leader calls out a target designator when he wants to shift fire.  The machinegunner than dials that target in on his T&E and he can rock and roll.  A mortar which has been placed in properly can do exactly the same thing – register the targets allowing for first round hits which saves ammo and pumps up the troops.

You also get cross links to blogs like Afghan Quest - which write about how the army hasn't changed much. The guys that do stuff get hassled by the guys who don't.

SecDef Gates: We are equipping ourselves for wars we aren't fighting

(Via Danger Room)

SecDef Gates has been trying to pare down the extravagant spending on weapons better suited for a clash of nations in favor of equipment better suited to the wars we happen to be fighting right now.

It's a thankless, uphill slog - but I'm cheering for the man.

When was the last time you heard a Defense Secretary talk like this?

...after September 11th, some things did change. The base defense budget – not counting spending for the wars – increased by some 70 percent over the next eight years.

...when all was said and done, the way the Pentagon selected, evaluated, developed, and paid for major new weapons systems and equipment did not fundamentally change – even after September 11th.

Indeed, the kinds of equipment, programs, and capabilities needed to protect our troops and defeat the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not the highest priority of much of the Defense Department, even after several years of war.

He points out that while other nations are buying new weapons and modernizing their forces:

...other nations have learned from the experience of Saddam Hussein’s military in the first and second Iraq wars – that it is ill-advised, if not suicidal, to fight a conventional war head-to-head against the United States: fighter-to-fighter, ship-to-ship, tank-to-tank. They also learned from a bankrupted Soviet Union not to try to outspend us or match our overall capabilities.

He then takes a good hard whack at the F-22 figher jet:

...the F-22 is clearly a capability we do need – a niche, silver-bullet solution for one or two potential scenarios – specifically the defeat of a highly advanced enemy fighter fleet. The F-22, to be blunt, does not make much sense anyplace else in the spectrum of conflict. Nonetheless, supporters of the F-22 lately have promoted its use for an ever expanding list of potential missions. These range from protecting the homeland from seaborne cruise missiles to, as one retired general recommended on TV, using F-22s to go after Somali pirates who in many cases are teenagers with AK-47s – a job we know is better done by three Navy SEALs. These are examples of how far-fetched some of the arguments have become for a program that has cost $65 billion – and counting – to produce 187 aircraft, not to mention the thousands of uniformed Air Force positions that were sacrificed to help pay for it.

In light of all these factors, and with the support of the Air Force leadership, I concluded that 187 – the program of record since 2005, plus four more added in the FY 09 supplemental – was a sufficient number of F-22s and recommended as such to the president.

-and then he beats on the F-22's proponents, hard:

The reaction from parts of the Washington establishment has been predictable for many of the reasons I described before. The most substantive criticism is that completing the F-22 program means we are risking the future of U.S. air supremacy. To assess this risk, it is worth looking at real-world potential threats and assessing the capabilities that other countries have now or in the pipeline.

Consider that by 2020, the United States is projected to have nearly 2,500 manned combat aircraft of all kinds. Of those, nearly 1,100 will be the most advanced fifth generation F-35s and F-22s. China, by contrast, is projected to have no fifth generation aircraft by 2020. And by 2025, the gap only widens. The U.S. will have approximately 1,700 of the most advanced fifth generation fighters versus a handful of comparable aircraft for the Chinese. Nonetheless, some have portrayed this scenario as a dire threat to America’s national security.

His central theme is one that I wish were central to discussions of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (emphasis mine):

The grim reality is that with regard to the budget we have entered a zero-sum game. Every defense dollar diverted to fund excess or unneeded capacity – whether for more F-22s or anything else – is a dollar that will be unavailable to take care of our people, to win the wars we are in, to deter potential adversaries, and to improve capabilities in areas where America is underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk that I will not take and one that I cannot accept.

Amen.

I have my doubts that a presidential veto threat is going to reverse the behavior of Congress - but at least somebody's trying.

NATO: Choppers on a shoestring

(Via Danger Room)

A heavy-lift helicopter, contracted by NATO, was shot down by the Taliban on Tuesday near the town of Sangin, in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Reports indicate a rocket-propelled grenade brought down the 30-ton, Moldovan Mi-26 chopper ...the biggest operational model in the world.

...

A chronic shortage of suitable NATO choppers means the alliance contracts a large proportion of its front-line air logistics to civilian firms. When I was at the Dutch base in Uruzgan in 2007, a civilian Mi-26 was a regular visitor, alongside U.S. C-130s and Dutch CH-47 Chinooks.

British journalist Richard North points out that the destroyed chopper’s operator, Pecotox Air, has been banned from European airspace, due to safety violations — and has also been implicated in a weapons smuggling probe. The shot-down Mi-26 was reportedly hovering over Sangin to deliver “humanitarian aid,” despite major fighting in the area for three weeks now. North believes the humanitarian claim is a front — that the Mi-26 was actually delivering supplies to a British base when it was hit, but the British government wants to distance itself from Pecotox, and from the broader lack of helicopters.

The Brits are contracting with shady, private companies to get their supplies in Afghanistan airlifted...?

Makes you wonder.

Targets wanted, will pay cash

See if you have the same reaction to this as I do:

The American and Pakistani intelligence services credit U.S. unmanned aircraft with decimating the ranks of terrorist and insurgent operatives in Pakistan. “Very frankly, it’s the only game in town in terms of confronting and trying to disrupt the Al Qaeda leadership,” CIA director Leon Panetta said in May.

But how the killer drones find their targets has been a matter of some dispute...

The Taliban are claiming that the US is paying informants to drop infrared beacons near houses where militants are located.

Here's one informant they claimed to catch:

In April, 19 year-old Habibur Rehman made a videotaped “confession” of planting such devices, just before he was executed by the Taliban as an American spy. “I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette paper at Al Qaeda and Taliban houses,” he said. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.”

But Rehman says he didn’t just tag jihadists with the devices. “The money was good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money,” he added. Which raises the possibility that the unmanned aircraft — America’s key weapons in its covert war on Pakistan’s jihadists and insurgents — may have been lead to the wrong targets.

Now, it's fair to point out that this confession was likely beaten out of this man - and that his captors have every motivation to discredit US efforts in the region - but really:

Given how badly paying bounties for Al Qaeda members played out in the past, you have to wonder: What kind of verification are they getting for these strikes?

How certain are they that their informants are targeting bad guys? At least with detainees, you get time to fix your mistakes.

(H/t Danger Room)

Coming to a bookstore near you...

(Via the NYT, emphasis mine)

An Afghan journalist who was held captive by the Taliban for more than seven months along with a New York Times reporter revealed details on Sunday of a nighttime escape that included weeks of careful plotting, taking advantage of weary guards and dropping down a 20-foot wall with a rope.

The Afghan journalist, Tahir Ludin, 35, said in an interview that the escape early Saturday from the second floor of a Taliban compound in North Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, was a desperate attempt by two severely demoralized reporters who believed that the Taliban were not seriously negotiating and would hold them indefinitely.

Mr. Ludin and David Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The Times, along with their driver, Asadullah Mangal, were abducted outside Kabul on Nov. 10 as Mr. Rohde traveled to interview a Taliban commander for a book he was writing about Afghanistan.

I realize this is an insensitive response to a serious matter - but...

-Mr. Rohde's book just became a whole lot pricier.